


Steady

by Storycat9



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Canon, BAMF Chloe Decker, Chloe and her Dad, Post-Devil Face Reveal to Chloe Decker, Season 3 Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:53:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25276483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Storycat9/pseuds/Storycat9
Summary: Breathe in. Plant your feet. Don’t think about anything but what’s in front of you.There are just some moments when her Dad's training comes back to Chloe when she needs it most.
Relationships: Chloe Decker & John Decker, Chloe Decker & Marcus Pierce, Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar
Comments: 22
Kudos: 140





	Steady

_Breathe in. Plant your feet. Don’t think about anything but what’s in front of you._

* * *

On her 12th birthday, John Decker finds his daughter hiding upstairs from the exhausting “party” Penelope’s thrown her, full of fellow tween stars and photographers on hand to document the picture-perfect California pool bash.

“Hey, Monkey, why are you up here by yourself? Did something happen?” John Decker lays a gentle hand on her head.

Chloe looks up at him, so frustrated and angry she’s nearly in tears. “I hate this. I don’t even know all these people. I had to act like I was best friends with that girl Ashley Graham for the camera and she didn’t even remember my name right when they were singing Happy Birthday!” She angrily mashes tears out of her eyes with the heel of a hand.

John Decker sighs, sits down on the stair next to her, wraps an arm around her. He’s a reticent man by nature, and he’s always deferred to his very strong-willed wife in the matter of what’s best for Chloe’s future. But now, looking down at the stubborn, rebellious draw of his daughter’s mouth, he makes a quick calculation. He squeezes her shoulder once, then pulls them both to their feet.

“Come on, Monkey. Let’s take a ride. I still haven’t given you your birthday present.”

She follows him, wide-eyed, surprised as much that he is sneaking her out of the house during one of her mother’s Events as the fact that she had, in fact, already gotten a present from her parents that morning, in the form of a gold charm bracelet. She’s even more surprised when they pull up at her father’s station and he leads her past the front desk.

“Hey John … well, hiya Chloe!" says the officer on the front desk, such a fixture that Chloe has never seen the desk without his bushy mustache behind it. "Aren’t you getting big. And all dressed up?”

“Hey Harry, anybody using the range?" her dad answers. "It’s my kid’s birthday today. I’m going to teach her to shoot.”

“Nah, hardly anybody’s even in today; you know how it goes,” he says. "Good on you. Have a good birthday, kiddo.'

Chloe passes through the bullpen with her father, surrounded by the low, efficient sounds of the precinct; the typing, occasional low talking and scratches of pen on paper. Officers bend over files or peer through microscopes in a lab she peeks into as she passes; they look serious, intent, nothing like the vapid adults schmoozing with her mom back at the party.

And then John Decker and his daughter are in the hushed and waiting silence of the shooting range. He takes apart his gun, explains each part as he puts it back together, takes it apart again and watches as she does the same. The whole afternoon is just spent learning to hold it correctly, to aim, to brace for the recoil. Maybe most of all, he teaches her how to calm herself, how not to be afraid of the dangerous thing in her hands or even of the dangerous times she would have to use it.

It’s exciting, even exhilarating that first time, something about the combination of sneaking out and of doing something Serious and Grown Up, something that shows her dad takes her seriously in a way her mom still doesn’t.

Over the weeks and months, the excitement settles into something stronger, deeper. Once a week, she’s alone with her dad, not worrying about homework or auditions. Once a week, in spite of the deafening reports of the pistol, it’s quiet in her head, nothing to concentrate on but the steady voice beside her.

“See how that one clipped the bottom? You’re squeezing too much with your thumb. Lighten up a little.”

“Nope, upper right. You’re anticipating the recoil. You have to brace for it, Monkey, but you can’t take the hit before it happens.”

She watches John Decker run three dead shots into the target in front of him, never flinching or changing expression. “Wow, Daddy,” she breathes.

He looks at her then. “Shooting targets is easy, baby. It is never easy to shoot a person. It isn’t supposed to be.”

He comes around to correct her aim again, adding, “Use your sights for targets, but remember you’ll need to use your eyes for people.”

* * *

Chloe doesn’t remember the last training session with her dad. She wishes so much that she could, but she didn’t think about it at the time. She didn’t realize it would be the last. She’s sure it had involved John Decker’s calm, patient voice, his hands occasionally adjusting her fingers or the tilt of her chin. Maybe his rueful grin if she misjudged a recoil and ended up hopping around, howling about a soon-to-be bruise. Like so many of them had.

She remembers when they stopped, though. Remembers standing by his grave on a mockingly beautiful California day, while one after another his brothers in blue came to pay their respects, came to swear to her and her mother in choked voices that they were going to catch the bastard that did this.

She is still young enough to believe them.

Penelope Decker is barely even upright. She’s been sobbing hysterically since the ceremony started, leaning hard on Chloe’s uncle who flew in from Minnesota.

Chloe can’t stop her own tears, but her sobs are silent at least, nearly still. She dimly realizes that she wants to be shooting right now— _should be_ shooting right now, that she and her dad are missing their weekly father-daughter date at the range because he’s here in the ground. And she’ll have at least two more years before she can start up again. She's too young to buy a gun in California, too young to shoot on her own.

 _Steady, Monkey_ , says the memory in her head. _Breathe. Don’t try to dodge the recoil._

She has almost, almost gotten under control when she spots the paparazzi’s camera flash.

* * *

Even in Los Angeles, most officers go through their whole careers never even drawing their weapons. But Chloe is already instinctively pulling her gun the moment Jimmy Barnes’ eyes cut toward the baby-faced new singer at his side, and something in her knows he’s about to take a hostage.

_Looking away is a rookie mistake, Monkey. That’s the sort of thing that gets people killed._

As the production team rushes out of the room, her eyes and weapon are steady on him, on the clear patch of white t-shirt at his chest not covered by the hostage he yanks in front of him.

“Hey, Jimmy—"

He’s cornered, not just upset but somehow resentful about being caught. He's not going to be easy to talk down.

“I made her. She ruined me. She humiliated me. She _owes_ me!” he growls, punctuating each sentence with a little jab of the gun handle into his would-be singer’s neck.

Chloe takes a slow breath, preparing the shot, when a curt, incredulous voice behind her snaps, “You’re not God, Jimmy; you didn’t make her. But you did destroy her. So I’m going to punish you.”

And now—oh dear _holy crap_ —her idiot civilian consultant is brushing past her, cutting into the line of her shot, as Jimmy winds himself up even more: “You back off you freak, I mean it! I am not going to jail for that bitch.”

Chloe desperately shifts to the side, trying to regain her focus, calling sharply, “Listen to him Lucifer, _back off_ —"

He half-turns with that careless ease, “I told you, it’s fine, I’m immortal—” he starts. Chloe sees the glint of Jimmy’s gun as the muzzle shifts from his hostage’s head to Lucifer’s unprotected back and—

_Don’t think about anything but what’s in front of you._

She sees that patch of t-shirt, squeezes the trigger once, twice until Jimmy is down and the hostage is frantically scrambling out of the way. She holds onto her calm, heading over to check him, when her damned idiot club owner steps in her way again, ranting about how shooting Jimmy was letting him off too easy, how he needs to feel the pain rather than escape it.

Chloe speaks through gritted teeth, trying to move past him. She sees movement from Jimmy. “He was going to kill you. Don’t worry, I’m sure where he’s _going_ , the pain’s _coming_.”

“No! No, it’s not actually, and you know why?” Lucifer’s voice rises and despite herself she can’t turn from it. “It’s because I’m here, and—”

_Crack. Crack._

_Oh_. Pain bursts across her chest and radiates down her side as she falls. She hears glass breaking.

_Looking away is a rookie mistake, Monkey. That’s the sort of thing that gets people killed._

And now she’s going to die just like her dad, in a shower of blood and broken glass. What a stupid thing. She thinks of Trixie eating dinner with Dan, and the thought of her little girl finding out hurts worse than her chest.

Lucifer’s tall form bends over her, his dark eyes wide. “I don’t want to die,” she manages.

He’s saying something, but it’s hard to concentrate. She hears her father calling her for shooting practice: _Crack, Crack, Crack_ in the background. Her partner winces, mutters something about being right back.

But Chloe can hear her dad calling even more clearly. He takes four more practice shots; she knows without seeing that they are perfect bullseyes. She wants to smile. She thinks she really needs to get up, she’s going to be late, and at the same time she hears glass shattering, turns her head slightly. There’s something red there with Jimmy, something her eyes can’t quite see. She’s still trying to look when the sense of her father fades, and rest of the world fades, too.

* * *

Chloe doesn’t hear her father’s voice every time every time she draws her gun—or even every time she’s near death. Their time together lives in her hands, her stance, the way she can sense the suspects that she might be able to talk down, even when they already have their guns out and another officer would have already pulled the trigger. And that patience is from her father, too.

She doesn't hear him, much as she longs to, all through her investigation of his cold case, through tracking and catching the corrupt prison warden Perry Smith. She testifies in support of Lucifer at Smith's trial, knowing she’s letting John Decker’s killer walk, and she can only hope he forgives her.

But she hears her father's voice in her head when she steps into the center of the Sinnerman's ambush, between the man she nearly married and the man she only just realized she loves. Her hands are up, away from her gun, affording such horribly little protection to either of them. Marcus Pierce, their Sinnerman, and Lucifer both urge her away, but her gaze stays on the target, on Marcus, those steel blue eyes she used to think were so clear and honest. He tells her he will kill her because she’s given him a reason to live. For all the sense that makes.

Her heart is calm now. Her eyes are quiet. Lucifer is still behind her, and she knows she has barely more than a breath before he tries to move in front.

“Ok, I believe you,” she tells Marcus, not trying to hide her voice shaking. “I don’t want to die.” Marcus winces, his face softening, gun lowering. She lets her hands start to fall naturally with his.

_Breathe in. Plant your feet._

“And I can’t.”

_Steady._

“Not without stopping you.”

She is John Decker's daughter, inheritor of his crack shot, and she is a miracle, and she is moving faster than she has ever moved in her life: Gun, target, shoot. Never breaking Marcus's gaze. It's the hardest thing Chloe has ever done and she knows it's supposed to be.

This time, Chloe doesn’t even feel the impact of the sniper’s response.

* * *

In the aftermath, all her desperate rush to find Lucifer comes up short at a sight her brain can hardly take in: blood, bodies—feathers?—everywhere, and this monster somehow dressed in Lucifer’s suit standing over Marcus's body. It stands and turns to her with a grotesque parody of relief on its scarred features.

And then the worst thing, the worst:

“Detective?” 

That gentle, questioning voice, Lucifer’s voice beyond any doubt or hope, coming from the Devil standing there in Lucifer’s suit.

Because he is the Devil.

“It’s all true,” she whispers. She instinctively takes a step back, and then another.

He has never been crazy. No, she’s the crazy one, because there is such a thing as a Devil and a God and Hell and a Heaven. She’s living with a demon. And either God is a horrible father who abuses His children and she has somehow fallen head over heels in love with the King of Hell, or her partner has been lying so monstrously from the very beginning that everything, everything is broken and nothing can ever make sense in the whole world.

_Breathe in. Plant your feet. Don’t think about anything but what’s in front of you._

Lucifer stands in front of her, his expression full of dawning realization and self-loathing. The floor at their feet is littered with the bloody feathers she felt protecting her during the assault.

Because he protected her.

And Lucifer never lies.

“It’s all true,” she says again, a little stronger this time. She breathes in. Breathes out.

He looks up at her, resigned. “Yes, Detective. It’s all true.” One side of the Devil's mouth quirks and she sees in it some echo of her partner’s sarcasm. “Though this isn’t quite the way I’d planned to tell you.”

She holds her ground, her hands and chin slightly up as when she’d faced Marcus, when she’d faced any of those who’d held her life in their hands.

“And the wings?”

“Real too. Not so much part of this,” he says, gesturing to his face. He’s shrinking back on himself, trying to look as nonthreatening as possible, and surely if he’s the Devil he can hear how her heart is trying to climb up into her throat.

What's in front of her is utterly unnatural, beyond the scope of what her brain can process, and its very existence turns everything upside down. But … all at once Chloe feels older and more tired than she’s ever felt. The case is over. The bad guys are dead. She wants a drink.

She wants _her partner_.

“Ok,” she whispers. "Ok." John Decker’s daughter forces herself to take a step toward the Devil in front of her, and then another, never breaking eye contact.

She sees when the hellfire in his eyes bleeds out to soft brown, when all the angry scars seem to melt away into a face she knows. And by the time she reaches him, her partner has regained himself, now trembling a little as she reaches out cautiously to touch his face.

“Chloe, I …”

They hear a wail of sirens and screeching tires outside. She tilts her head toward the sound. “I think that’s going to take awhile to deal with. … and I think this is going to take awhile.”

Chloe takes a breath, holds on, holds his eyes. “Will you stay and help me?”

Lucifer Morningstar looks at her with the faintest stirring of hope. “Always, Detective. For as long as you’ll let me.”

**Author's Note:**

> I really loved "My Little Monkey," and always wanted to see more of how her father had shaped Chloe as a detective, beyond just wanting to find his killer. And it's also true that Chloe shoots and is shot at way, waaaaay more than she would in real life. Three out of four police have *never* used their weapon at all, in their whole careers. I tend to think the whole "miracle" thing also means she gets a little lucky, because otherwise, Guardian Devil or no, Chloe should have been dead about a dozen times over.


End file.
